Quick PC Tutorials – Alt + F4

I can’t count how many YouTube videos I’ve laughed at where someone who is streaming live get’s told by the chat to press Alt+F4 on their keyboard only to either close the application or shutdown a game they were streaming. This has been the source of a lot of trolling videos but I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be and there’s some explaining it so we don’t get duped into using it incorrectly.

In Windows, aside from pressing the handy X at the top right of most application windows, most of the time, there will be an equally powerful keyboard alternative. This is Alt+F4 on your keyboard. In the video, I explain how any application window that is in focus can be simply closed in quick succession by simply pressing the key combination. This can either be really powerful for those of you who need to close down applications extremely fast or shutdown your computer with ease.

Note, that you must press Alt+F4 for each window that is opened, after one window shuts down, the application that is now in the front foreground and in “Focus” is now ready for you to use or close down that next application, so on and so fourth with the same key combination. Until you run out of application windows to close or you have no application windows in focus, you will not get prompted for the shutdown options by your computer.

So, if you practice this, you can more than likely be fast enough to avoid your boss catching you checking out YouTube on company time. Close that NSFW website you don’t want people knowing you’re into that. Or simply shutdown that PC like a quick draw wild west antagonist destined to be the fastest keyboard gun in the west.

Either way, its a simply little key combination that I’m sure might come in handy for whatever you need it for and hope this helps you out in navigating Microsoft Windows that much easier.